


I have an aungel which that loveth me

by HolRose



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Canterbury Tales, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, St Cecilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-08 13:43:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21476971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HolRose/pseuds/HolRose
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley meet in 1413 at The Tabard Inn in Southwark, London. A literary discussion leads to revelations about Aziraphale's past and we find out that being an Angel may be just as difficult as being a Demon.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 77





	I have an aungel which that loveth me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Libbyfay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Libbyfay/gifts).

> This work is a sequel to the lovely fic by Libbyfay entitled Sloth. I could not get the link to work in this notes field, so it is given at the beginning of the text of the story. Do read it, it is great!
> 
> My thanks and love go to them for their friendship and support. Were it not for their encouragement, I would not still be writing fics here. Love also to the fandom, which is so warm and inclusive, thank you all for being so lovely.

**Southwark, 1411**

** [Sloth, by Libbyfay](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19832464) **

_Aziraphale, concerned that he had not seen Crowley for around a century, made it his business to seek the demon out in his disreputable lodgings at Southwark, paying him a visit and leaving him a book as a present, with strict instructions that he read it and report back to him with his reactions to it. The book was a manuscript, as were all books at this time, written on parchment and bound in a floppy leather binding. Aziraphale had commissioned it especially from Adam Pinkhurst, Chaucer’s personal scribe. It was a folio copy of the “Canterbury Tales”._

***

Well, that had been a thing. A visit from the angel because he was worried, and a book, and all that _love_. Even Crowley had been able to feel it. Aziraphale had been looking prosperous and purposeful, busy in all the chaos around them, trying to make a difference. Crowley in contrast felt sour, strung out, prickly, indisposed, a soused and sodden spare part, sleeping away the years because he had no real role to play. He had received no direct instructions from Hell for years, there was no need for him to foment or get up anywhere and make some trouble, enough evil was happening everywhere without demonic influence. Perhaps it was easier, being an angel, having right on your side, endlessly doing good.

Throughout the thirteen hundreds, it had felt like the Apocalypse was near, the wraiths of all the horsemen stalking Europe through a century of plague, famine and war, and everywhere there strode behind them the pale figure of Death, his name ever on the lips of the multitude of terrified and dispossessed. A third of the population had gone, crops rotted in the fields, children died of starvation in their skeletal mothers’ arms while their fathers’ corpses decomposed on European battlefields.

Southwark, under the jurisdiction of the Bishops of Winchester, free of London’s legal strictures, was where he had drifted naturally with the tide of the marginalised and come to rest amongst the drunks, travellers, players, criminals and the bawdy, laughing whores and mollies, the Winchester Geese. They had made him welcome while he bought them beer and liquor. He had laughed with them as they drank and made merry, braving the years of filth and fever with them until he could stand the deaths and the stink no longer. Then they had become afraid of the darkness he could no longer hide from them and had left him alone, which by that time was all he craved of them. He had shut himself away to sleep, warding his room, no longer able to face that which he had no power to mend.

Yet still they persisted, the humans. Aziraphale had woken him to a new century and when he looked, the city was still full of them, striving and fighting, loving and dreaming. The Angel had hinted that the time for sleeping was over, and had brought him a present. He sat with it now in front of him in his room. _The Canterbury Tales_ by Geoffrey Chaucer. He knew that pilgrims travelled to Canterbury, Southwark was often full of them as they took the road west from the capital, following their penitent journey to the tomb of the Sainted Thomas. The book would doubtless be both worthy and dry as dust, some didactic religious treatise calculated to edify and guaranteed to bore. Still, it had been a kind thought and he had softened at the sight of the angel, his sweet face worried, brow furrowed, cheeks pink as he said his piece. Aziraphale had been right, he had been sad, depressed even, and the visit and the angel’s show of concern had cheered him. He would do his duty and read at least some of it, so that he could say something vaguely intelligent when he met with Aziraphale to report back, whenever that would be. He would not have to read it all, as long as he had an outline, he would be fine. Aziraphale liked to talk when it was about culture, often all he had to do was smile, nod and keep pouring the wine.

The book was beautiful. The hand was a fine one, clear and confident, the black letters uniform and shapely, and there were tasteful illuminations around the capitals at the beginning of each set of verses. He lifted it to his face and smelled the tang of tanning and the bitter traces of iron gall. It smelled new. When he started reading, he was surprised to find that it was not in courtly French or scholarly Latin as he had expected, but in English, in verse, with a swinging beat, fresh, vigorous and easy to follow. He settled back against the headboard of his bed, pulling a greasy pillow behind his shoulders, and began to read:

_When that April with his showers sweet_

_The drought of March hath piercéd to the root_

_And bathéd every vein in such liquor_

_Of which virtue engendered is the flower…_

***

The Prologue was fun, so many characters on their pilgrimage, so well described. There was much humour here and something sly too, a subtle satire on establishment figures. This was proving to be much more interesting than Crowley had imagined, he had even found himself laughing at some of it. He read on.

The Knight’s Tale. This was predictable, he supposed, a chivalric love story, nothing much new in that, but nicely told. The tales would be told in a hierarchical order, he expected, starting with the Knight and working through the strata of society, the clerics coming first, men then women, then the ordinary folk, the tradesmen and others.

Oh no, he was wrong, here was the drunken Miller, Robin, insisting that he get to tell his tale before the Monk and threatening to leave the company if they did not give him his way. This was new, Crowley thought:

_But first I make a protestatioune_

_That I am drunk, I know it by my soul_

_And therefore if that I misspeak or say_

_Blame it the ale of Southwark, I you pray..._

***

‘He caught her by the _what_?’ said Crowley out loud, his brows shooting towards his untidy hairline.

He had been reading the most poetic description of the carpenter’s beautiful eighteen-year-old wife after details in the verse of her older husband and their student lodger. He had thought the set-up spelled trouble in a way that was familiar to him from some of the Greek and Roman texts he had previously come across. An older husband, a wife who was a beauty and described as ‘wild and young’ and a younger man staying in the house who had the eye for her. He was not expecting the earthiness of the language when she was alone with her young suitor, especially from a book lent to him by an angel. Had Aziraphale actually read this before giving it to him, he wondered. He chuckled to himself and continued with the story, drawn-in and wanting to see what was going to happen next.

It only got bawdier, a tale of infidelity and deception where the husband was made a fool of and another suitor humiliated in the basest way. Crowley wasn’t shocked exactly, he was a demon after all, but he was surprised. This was not what he had been expecting at all. He loved it, and it cheered him. It wasn’t the story so much, but the language used, the vigour of expression, the sheer joy in living it represented, lusty, vital, real. Despite everything that had been happening recently in this country and abroad, this astonishing man had written something both beautiful and scintillatingly alive, speaking of the resilience of the human spirit, the ability to find something fine and joyful in the direst of circumstances. That and the sheer pleasure of a well-timed fart joke.

Crowley smiled and thought of Aziraphale and was glad. The angel had known he needed cheering, so as well as bringing his love, he has also gifted him this, a reassurance that darkness need not dim the human spirit, the tonic he needed to bring him back into the world again. He would leave this filthy room with its atmosphere of gloom and despair and find himself somewhere more congenial. When he got there, he would make the effort not to frighten the locals, maybe create a little mischief, sow some discord in the wealthier areas of the city, that always made him feel good. And he would finish this book, and find his Angel and share some food and drink and talk about it, he knew that would make them both happy.

***

**The Tabard Inn, Southwark, February 1413**

‘Hello, Angel’

‘_Crowley_!’

Sometimes, when they had been apart for a while, seeing the angel again was like meeting him afresh. Today he looked newly made, glowing with pleasure, his smile lighting up those well-known features just as it had on the wall in Eden. He was modestly dressed in a pale woollen houppelande that fell to his knee, cinched in around his waist with a leather belt from which hung his purse. The only concession to current fashion was the generous sleeves, known appropriately as angel wings, that swayed by his sides as his hands clasped together, as ever, by his stomach. His linen-white curls escaped from a blue velvet hat, worn at an angle towards the back of his head, it brought out the colour of his eyes, which sparkled as he looked at Crowley with obvious goodwill.

‘My dear fellow, how good it is to see you.’

He started forward and gripped Crowley warmly by the hand, drawing him close for a kiss on one cheek, as was the custom. Their cheeks touched together for an instant and Crowley felt the hot blush of the angel’s skin against his snake sigil. All the love he felt, all of it was still there and it knocked at his heart with a little, percussive, shock, just like it always did.

‘I am so sorry that I could not meet with you sooner, I was ordered away to Rome, trouble with the Papal bankers. I forsee more trouble there, in time. I did what I could. They are a difficult family.’

‘That’s alright, Angel, gave me more time to read the book. There wasn’t much else to do here anyway, what with another bout of plague keeping everyone from travelling. Shall we go in? I thought it was appropriate to meet here, as this is where the story begins.’

Crowley, all in black velvet with red hose and outrageously pointed shoes indicated the archway that led to the entrance to this venerable hostelry. Aziraphale bowed and made the usual gesture with his hand, borne of his particular brand of courteousness.

‘After you, my dear.’

They took a private room upstairs so that they could talk freely, and had the Proprietor send them up some red Bordeaux.

‘So you liked it then, the book?’ Aziraphale was positively smirking.

‘Yeees, Angel.’ Crowley was smiling too, giving back a smirk for a smirk, ‘Had you read it then, before you gave it me?’

‘Of course I had, my dear. I am not in the habit of recommending reading that I do not know the value of.’

Aziraphale never failed to give as good as he got, meeting teasing with a robust response, always.

‘And you an angel as well. I know it is poetry, and pretty poetry at that, but some of the language and all of the…’

‘Filth, are you going to say, Crowley?’ Aziraphale smiled, delightedly, ‘it’s art, it’s what the best of them do, make art of their lives, and that includes the carnal and the profane, as well as the elevated and divine. It’s part of what I love about them.’

‘Me too, Angel, I loved it, and I was grateful, it brought me out of the, erm, mood I had been in, made me see that if they could strive, I could too. And it made me laugh, I needed that.’

‘I met him once you know, Chaucer.’

‘Really, Angel?’

‘Yes, remarkable man, He fought in Europe in the thirteen fifties and sixties and then went into the old king’s service. He had seen a great deal by the time I talked with him. It never ceases to amaze me how people become, if anything, more creative in times of conflict and unrest. They are so vital, human beings, their lives burn so brightly.’ Aziraphale looked across at Crowley, affectionately, ‘I am so glad you enjoyed the work, I had hoped that it might help, it helped me in the same way. Sometimes they see things more clearly than I can, sometimes they are wiser than we, I think.’

‘Yes, Angel, I think perhaps you are right about that. What was your favourite tale, then?’

‘Oh, the Nun’s Priest’s, I think. And you?’

‘The Wife of Bath, Angel, you’ve got to love Alison…’

***

They talked for hours, becoming more animated as they drank their wine and called for further bottles. They agreed and disagreed, argued backwards and forwards, quoting and counter quoting, their eyes bright, customary areas of dissent between them put aside for a while. The afternoon passed pleasantly in this fashion and soon, twilight was upon them. Crowley suggested calling for food to soak up some of the good French wine, and Aziraphale, for once, did not seek to hasten away, but agreed to stay, mellowed by the alcohol and conversation, allowing himself to relax from his usual attitude of vigilance and the fear of discovery that habitually simmered just under the surface of his mind.

‘One thing I was wondering, Angel.’ Crowley put down the chicken bone he was gnawing and wiped his hands on a napkin, ‘the Second Nun’s Tale,’ he swigged at his wine and held the glass, pointing across at Aziraphale, ‘how accurate is that one then, do you know?’

Aziraphale froze, his eyes going glassy. He put down the piece of bread he had been going to dip into the sauce in his trencher and placed his hands flat upon the table.

‘Ah, well, these things, you know, the oral tradition, tales become confused, garbled…’ his voice tailed off.

_Cecilia, at her wedding, singing, her glossy hair like a ripe cherry pinned high on her head, her dark sloe eyes raised to Heaven, her gown white and blue, It was always blue they wore, the colour of purity, of sacrifice. The rendering up of lives hardly begun, the obscenity of the need for that call, the merciless correctness of divine vocation…_

‘That was a hard one to read, the language was lovely though, he really put his heart into the descriptions.’

Crowley was expansive, leaning back and talking while Aziraphale sat, like stone.

‘It isn’t quite right, they got it confused, it’s been overlaid with things that became important after that time, in the way that these things do…’

Aziraphale spoke flatly, not looking at Crowley but instead at the grain of the wood of the table in front of him.

_Cecilia and her young husband, his eyes sweetly grave looking across at her. The feel of their hands in his, her slim fingers, his broader. Warm, young. The earnestness of their belief, their choice. The smell of the lilies and the roses, sickly and sweet, sweet and sickly…_

‘Typical though, isn’t it, two young people and two more getting roped in and they all have to die, and for what? For a few more souls for heaven. What’s that all about then, bloody _martyrdom_? Why the fuck does She ask that of them? Test them, yes, but why test them to destruction?’

Crowley was well on his way to drunkenness and spoke on a subject that had exercised him frequently before.

_Their young heads, curls thick with gore, eyes sightless. The crowd, shouting and baying. The screaming girl dragged away, refusing to take back all she had said, bracing herself against their threats and abuse, the spittle running down her cheek…_

‘What a waste, and the usual stipulations, what the sanctified bastards decide is _holy_. To be chaste, not to even get to…’

‘To love each other,’ finished Aziraphale, his mouth turned down, eyes awash.

‘It’s just a pile of bollocks, there’s no sin in love, right? Look at old Chaucer there and how he shows it. It’s what they do, what they are, it’s beautiful… Aziraphale? Are you alright?’

_Cecilia, talking and preaching, her mouth moving above that other mouth in her neck, the red smile of the wounds, shifting and seeping, weeping red fluid as he, invisible, held her, and held here there, for three days until he was told he could stop and let her die, let her soul go._

_Cecilia, composed in her tomb as if sleeping, the neat bandages about her neck the only sign of her torture…_

Crowley’s face was close as he leaned over the table and lifted the angel’s chin with his fingers. His eyes widened when he saw the tears.

‘Aziraphale…? Oh no… _No, Aziraphale…_ It wasn’t…It was, wasn’t it? _Fuck_! It was you there, you were the angel…’

The martyrdom of Saint Cecilia in Rome, along with her husband, his brother and a soldier named Maximus, in 230 AD, this was the subject of the Second Nun’s Tale in Chaucer’s work. She was not fictional, but a real woman who had died for her faith in the early days of Christianity. Aziraphale had been instructed to act as her guardian angel and directed to protect her chastity. He was bidden to let it be known to her that her new husband would be killed if he encroached upon her virtue on their wedding night. The bride, full of sweetness and her groom full of love for her, they had agreed together that he would convert to the new faith himself. Aziraphale had appeared to the couple, taking their oath of purity and giving them coronets of lilies and roses representing fidelity and chastity. The husband had then convinced his brother to become baptised likewise. All were sentenced to death by the Roman courts for their adherence to the new religion. The two brothers were beheaded together along with a poor soldier who had converted on beholding the trio, but Cecilia was taken for special treatment. She was tortured with fire and divine protection was delivered for her. The Angel of the Lord then oversaw the three days Cecilia spent in prayer and preaching the word of God after her head was partially severed from her neck in an attempt to execute her. This was the miracle that had ensured her beatification. Not the miracle of her fragile life, or that of her pretty voice, but that of her torturous death. Aziraphale still thought of it sometimes, still remembered her.

It had been a dark time in the Roman Empire, when Christians were routinely killed for their beliefs. There had been many martyrdoms, Crowley had been vaguely aware of this going on when he had been busy with the increasingly corrupt line of Imperial Caesars. He hadn’t seen Aziraphale at this time at all and had no idea what he had been ordered to do concerning these deaths. The stories of the early Christian martyrs by mediaeval times had become part of the tradition of storytelling. It was not unusual to find their stories in collections written at this time. Aziraphale had deliberately not read this tale and had hoped, given its subject matter, that Crowley would refrain from mentioning it.

‘I am so sorry, Angel. So you would have had to kill her husband too, if he had tried to...’

‘I cannot talk about this Crowley, you know that, please don’t ask about it, please. I have said too much already’ Aziraphale stared at Crowley, his eyes desperate, then closed them, brow furrowed.

‘But…’

‘NO, Crowley!’ his eyes flew open, wide and suddenly steely, ‘We cannot have this conversation. I will not talk about Rome. I must go, I have stayed too long as it is, I don’t know what I was thinking.’

Aziraphale got up, knocking his chair over, and hurried out of the room leaving his hat abandoned on the table. He paused in the main bar of the inn to pay Harry Bailey, the Proprietor, then almost ran out into the torch lit courtyard outside, passing through the archway and into the gloom of the unlit Southwark streets.

After sobering up, Crowley grabbed the hat and followed, running, aware that Aziraphale with his distinctive hair, smart clothes and full purse was a target for any of the petty thieves that infested the Borough like lice. He found the angel in an alleyway, not far from the Inn, leaning against a wall, breathing heavily.

‘I waited for you, there is something I forgot to tell you.’ His breath hitched as he tried to master his emotions.

‘Aziraphale, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…’ His hands fluttered in the air near the angel, wanting to offer comfort, a touch, a hug. Crowley was distraught, full of love and sorrow. He grabbed a hand and hung on, feeling the angel squeeze back in response to his grip.

‘Crowley, there is so much, so much I may not speak of, please try to understand. I cannot question what I am, you know the penalties, for both of us, and the risk is too great. I beg you, do not ask any more of me.’

There was anguish in his voice, but something there that offered hope to Crowley too, an understanding relating to things of which he knew neither of them could afford to speak.

‘I know, Angel, the things they make us do…’ It wasn’t easier being an angel, not easier at all, he realised.

‘The things that we _must_ do. But enough of that. You need to get away from here,’ Aziraphale lifted their joined hands and placed his other over the top of them, shaking them for emphasis, ‘you must leave here as soon as you can.’

Crowley saw from the angel’s face that he was deadly serious. He drew him closer so that they could lower their voices.

‘Why? Explain,’ he hissed.

‘I know people at court, I hear things. The King is ill and weak, his son has taken charge but those that would oppose him have found one who is willing to say that he is the old king, not dead but in hiding. You know how uncertain things political have been of late and you must have heard the rumours. There is to be an insurrection and its heart is here. Southwark is whispered as the place where the rebellion is to begin. Please, Crowley, take yourself away from here, and keep safe.’

‘I shall, Angel, be sure of it. Thank you.’

‘It would be best if we did not see each other again for a while. If it became known that I had warned you of this or that we had met as we have today, you know what might happen, to both of us, and I cannot risk that, I will not.’

‘I’ll keep the book, Angel, and think of you when I read it.’

Crowley bent his head and kissed the hand that lay over his. Their eyes met for a moment in the darkness, mere glints of light that each could see of the other, then they let go of each other’s hands.

‘Your hat, Angel’

He pulled it from his belt and passed it to Aziraphale so that he could cover his bright hair.

‘Stay safe yourself, wherever you go,’ he turned, walking away into the starlit night. Aziraphale drew his hand down sharply and disappeared from the alleyway.

***

The rebellion of 1413 in Southwark was short lived, being put down ruthlessly with some loss of life by Henry of Monmouth, the King’s son. Henry, the fourth King of that name died on the 20th March 1413 and was succeeded by his son, the new Henry V, who immediately restarted the war with France and took his knights and soldiers into Europe once again. By this time Crowley was far away, travelling north. In his luggage, wrapped carefully in linen and tucked away, was the bound manuscript.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the Second Nun's Tale by Chaucer  
The family in Rome are the Medici.  
There really was an uprising in Southwark in 1413 and it was the place where the most disreputable of London's citizens tended to end up, the mediaeval equivalent of Soho.
> 
> The manuscript of the Canterbury Tales that I had in mind when I wrote this was the one in the National Library of Wales known as the Hengwrt Chaucer. They have it digitised on their site. Go see and then imagine it when it was new...


End file.
